Shared musings by Wayne Abernathy on how the eternal things make all things new. A brief consideration. . .

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Why is Congress not legislating? Congress is the national legislature. The Constitution vests Congress with exclusive legislative rights. Then why will the Members of Congress not legislate?

Among the exclusive legislative jobs for Congress is to appropriate funds for the operations of government. This is a regular, annual task. This must be well understood: for Congress to fail to fund the operations of the federal government is a dereliction of duty of the highest order. Nothing prevents the Members from doing that duty, and no one else can do it.

The President cannot legislate, least of all appropriate. That limitation is firmly placed as a check on executive power. The President may not write a single word of legislation, he may not appropriate one penny. If the agencies of government are not funded, it is because Congress has failed to fund them. No one else can fund them, and no one else can fail to fund them. Currently, Congress has not done its job for much of the federal government, and the Members of Congress have no excuse, no justification for the failure.

The President can make recommendations to Congress, he can ask for appropriations. Congress can heed or disregard such recommendations and requests entirely at its discretion. They have no effect except as Congress chooses.

Some might say, but what about the President’s veto? Can he not refuse to sign an appropriation, and send the bill back to Congress? Indeed he can. He may send it back, but he cannot change it, he cannot add or remove a single word. Congress can decide whether to change the legislation, do nothing, or vote to override the veto. Those decisions are entirely in the hands of the legislators.

It is no excuse for legislators to say that they cannot find sufficient agreement whether to override a veto or even to pass a law. Whose fault is that? True representative legislatures (not the rubber stamps of communist dictatorships) have always had the difficult job of dealing with disagreement. That is why we have legislatures with numerous members. It is expected that there will be varying points of view. The legislators’ responsibility is to resolve these differences sufficient to pass necessary laws.

Appropriations for government operations are necessary laws. They are also among the most malleable of questions. When the consideration is money for government projects, there is a compromise to be found. We will not pass anything is not an acceptable option. It is legislative failure.

Presidents may say that they will veto a bill that does not meet certain standards. That is a President’s prerogative, but the Constitution is careful to make it a surmountable obstacle. The Members of Congress, working through the legislative process, may either find a sufficient majority to pass a law that the President will not veto or a sufficient unity of view that will allow them to override the veto. Doing nothing until the President changes his view is dereliction.

Presidents have had vetoes overridden. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, vetoed 635 Acts of Congress passed by strong majorities of fellow Democrats. Congress overrode several of those. Ronald Reagan vetoed 78 Acts of Congress, several of which were overridden.

Most often, a significant number of Members will sympathize with the President’s view. That calls for legislative efforts to find a formula reasonable enough that the President does not reasonably veto it. That is what the national legislature traditionally does and is expected to do. That is what this Congress has so far failed to do. That failure is entirely the fault of the Members of Congress.

Sitting and waiting to pick my wife up from a meeting at a youth piano festival, I can see a marvelous thing. I am witnessing a steady stream of people coming and going—and accommodating one another. They are doing what it takes to spend time together, setting aside what they might wish to do on their own, bending their plans to involve the plans of others, each doing so to some extent, and all more or less satisfied with it.

Parents are taking time at whatever inconvenience to hear children play the piece that has been sounding from the living room for weeks. They will crowd into a classroom converted for the day into a makeshift music hall where young performers will queue for their three-minute performances. Nervous children will wait their turns, relieved children will be glad that their turns are over, and parents will politely listen to other parents’ children, perhaps playing the same piece that their child just attempted.

It cannot be called much of a musical experience—I have been there in those temporary conservatories—but it is an experience in accommodation in a good society. Most of the people in the room have never met, little know one another, and do not expect to meet again, and they get along fine. Those who run the festival have freely given hours to organize the event to accommodate the hundreds of participants.

As the participants leave, in quite orderly ways, they continue to accommodate one another with little thought. It is the normal, customary thing to do. They take turns through doors, they help carry books, some hold hands, and they smoothly arrange who will sit where in the car. Some may chat about the performance, some may chat about other activities of the day, continuing to adapt schedules and plans. This is how society and its people get along.

It can easily break down. Some accommodation is easy and natural, some takes effort. It all involves an element of sacrifice of some personal desire or plan or wish.

I contrast this with the horror of the current presidential campaign. It comes in the climate change of a chief executive who for seven long years has offered an example of little to no accommodation, asserting his will forward by dividing society, pitching Americans against one other. This very real climate change endangers the future of our Great Republic, our hard-won society, and our very real welfare. It breeds imitators. President Obama’s executive narcissism has fomented fears and frustrations while making egocentrism in high places unsocially acceptable.

By long tradition we have come to call our Presidents public servants. Would anyone apply that term to Barack Obama, or imagine those words describing would-be presidents Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?

Donald Trump in particular has built his candidacy on personal braggadocio about running roughshod over others. He threatens retaliation against opponents, warning them Caesar-like of when it will be “their turn” for his attention. He promises thunderbolts of lawsuits as tools of Olympian vengeance should anyone pin effective criticism on him. In short, when given a podium he gives new meaning to the term bully pulpit.

Should any doubt his intentions, Trump points to a business career built on his model of punishing human interaction. Now Trump seeks the full power of the Presidency of the United States to be placed in his hands—all of the federal government’s economic tools and the might of our military at his disposal to pursue his wishes and run over any and all who would stand in his way. The discipline of the marketplace will no longer hold him back. No wonder he expresses admiration for Russia’s would-be-czar Vladimir Putin, a kindred spirit.

Remember what the military—any military—does. It kills people and destroys things. In the hands of genuine public servants operating within constitutional limits, for 200 years that power has been controlled to defend and preserve the Republic and the liberties of its people, and liberated not an insignificant number of peoples around the world. What would a Donald Trump do with such power? How would he accommodate his personal ambition to the will of the people? What happens when those powers are used to apply the ego-laced Trump model to the national and world arenas?

We have had too much of this abuse of power already with the Obama administration. A republic like the United States thrives by accommodating the great variety that makes our nation. The current President has sought to get his way by manipulating the differences among us. His has been a cynical program to rule by dividing and conquering, when necessary running over constitutional constraints designed by the Founders to require government officials to accommodate the diverse elements of our union. Too often, but fortunately not always, President Obama has gotten away with it.

Donald Trump promises to give it a go, with an audacity that surely makes Barack Obama envious. Of course, we see examples each day of unaccommodating and rude actions, but we do not usually applaud boorish behavior. The usual pattern for ourselves and our neighbors has been to make way for each other, extend courtesies, and even help; we show patience and even kindness, that are akin to love. The little and frequent and vital considerations to our neighbors are of the glue that holds our good society together, transcending our personal foibles.

What can we say, then, of opposing examples presented by would-be national leaders? What are the consequences for society itself (beyond the potential calamities for national and global affairs)? Given the degree to which people take their social cues from the chief executive—for good or ill—what do we get from a President who is a brash boor who threatens any and all to feed his ambition? What kind of imitation, here and abroad, will that spawn?

For the good of our society we can aspire to something better. I believe that most yet do.

In the early Autumn of 2008, the presidential election was vying for attention with the onset of financial panic—the latter aggravated by the unwise policies of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who repeatedly spooked the markets and drove investors to the sidelines. At that time I published a blog post about the Democrats’ nominee for president, Barack Obama, “Of Con Artists and Presidential Candidates”. I refer to that not because I take pleasure in being right about the calamities that followed, but because we are faced yet again with the potential election of a con artist as President of the United States. I am not sure that we can stand in the White House a consecutive fomenter of calamities, though I hold to my great confidence in the resilience of our Great Republic. As with ancient Rome, it will take a lot for the barbarians to overrun civilization, but the process is terrible. In the end, it was repeatedly bad government that gave the Goths, Huns, and Vandals the victory.

I need not catalog the list of Goths, Huns, and Vandals that civilization faces today, but it starts with radical Islam, and mullahs of Iran, the mentally-disturbed dictator in North Korea, and the current would-be czar of Russia. Not a one of these should pose a serious threat to the survival of the United States, and not a one of them would have achieved the level of danger that it poses today, were it not for the bad leadership of our nation (little relieved by any appreciably better leadership among most of our allies).

Which returns me to con artists. At least three of the prominent presidential candidates have built their campaigns on the effort to con the American voters. For the most part, our popular media are buying and supporting it all, either for its good copy or for its entertainment value, hard to tell. I refer to Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. The greatest, or worst, of these is Donald Trump. Hillary wears so many masks, one wonders whether she even knows who she is. Bernie is the foremost in promising trillions of dollars in government freebies that could never be delivered, since trying to do so would collapse the economy—you have to pay for that stuff somehow, and the dollars will not come from economic decline. Donald Trump, like our current president, is a classic demagogue—the bane of democratic government—saying whatever he may to stimulate and feed upon the failures, fears, and frustrations of significant segments of voters.

Donald Trump offers no discernible philosophy of government beyond bluster and hubris. From his personal history one can find that he thrives—when he thrives—by networking cronies, including government officials whose favor he courts to support his “business” plans. Pretending to be an outsider, he has lived by being a consumate courtier, a classic insider.

Is he a conservative? Then why do his ideas so often turn to big-government solutions? Does he believe in the Constitution? Constitutional constraints would get in his way. The unifying theme of his shoot-from-the-hip ideas is an action platform of presidential dictatorship, with anyone who opposes them or him labeled as enemies, losers, or idiots. He surely feels like the kind of person our Constitution was written to protect us from.

While Donald Trump does not often mouth the word “change,” (perhaps because that would make his likeness to Obama too apparent) he is clearly offering the same “change” formula as candidate Obama served up in 2008. Obama’s “change” in 2008 was really more of the same of the tried and failed tax-and-spend programs of government control over our lives. Donald Trump pretends to something new, to change government, when in fact his plan is all government, and government controlled of, by, and for his cronies. That was the same way he ran his businesses. He offers you his business model as a model for government. Do not take the deal. We will all be losers.

There is a poignant scene in “Lawrence of Arabia”, a movie with many poignant scenes, in which Lawrence demonstrates to a fellow officer how to snuff out a candle. He pinches the flame with his fingers. The other officer gives it a try but jerks back his hand when his fingers are scorched.

“That hurts,” the officer complains. Lawrence replies, “Certainly it hurts. The trick is not minding that it hurts.”

There is a lesson there, particularly important for a society that has become hypersensitive to injury, real or imagined. Hurt may come from something as small as a look—or failure to look. It may come from an article of clothing, either worn or neglected. Lately flags have been targeted as sources of personal and even societal pain. Hurt may come from something as small as a word. Indeed, I think that most often today and in our society, both words and our sensitivity to words have become sharpened.

If we are to preserve freedom of speech—in all its important varieties—we need to develop some insensitivity, as in not minding when it hurts. Freedom of speech only matters when someone hears something he does not like. The choice then is intolerance and silence or freedom and not minding the hurt.

Another way to look at it is that we most desire freedom of speech when we are the speaker. From the point of view of listener, we may have mixed emotions. We may like what we say, but when we do not like what we hear do we wish to silence the speaker, or do we accept the options of free speech, to turn away or to endure another’s unpleasant rodomontade?

Freedom of speech was made part of the First Amendment, because rulers and monarchs were at pains to inflict genuine physical hurt whenever they took offense at the words of their subjects. The First Amendment’s protection of free speech was needed to protect people using words that hurt people in government, that offended people in power.

Even though enshrined in the Constitution, freedom of speech has to be won by each generation, because it is constantly in jeopardy. Americans are nearly unanimous in their support of freedom of speech when it is speech that they like, speech that reinforces their own views, and especially speech that praises and flatters. We do not particularly need the Constitution to protect that kind of speech. Speech that is unpopular, speech that goes against the grain, speech that is obnoxious to our opinions, speech that challenges our beliefs, that is the speech the Founders fought to protect. Most of human progress has come from that kind of speech. It is speech that is worth protecting today and that many try to silence.

President Obama and his political friends are fond of declaring that “the debate is over,” whether referring to Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank Act, climate change, same-sex marriage, or other important issues of significant disagreement. I expect that soon we will hear President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry, and other administration spokesmen insist that the debate is over with regard to the nuclear deal with Iran. In a free republic, can the debate ever really be over?

This is nothing new; it is a continuation of a very old struggle. Despots great and petty since early ages have exercised what power they might to silence ideas and expressions they did not want to hear, or did not want others to hear. The gallows, flames, and torture chambers of yesteryear are matched today by bullets, bombs, and bayonets from radical Islam and totalitarian governments. In the West, where constitutions solemnly embrace free speech, voices are silenced by public ridicule, elaborate and intrusive regulations on what can and cannot be said and when and where—reinforced by government fines, restrictions, confiscations, and jail time.

I recently visited my son at his new job at a large factory. He was very careful to spell out to me a lengthy list of subjects I should not bring up, whether from fear of his colleagues, company policies, or federal, state, and local regulations. I have been given similar training at my place of work.

When I was young I was taught to be courteous and not seek to offend. I was also taught to be slow to take offence. Do children today repeat the rhyme I heard as a child? “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.” I wonder. Or are our children taught today that there is great reward in being the sensitized “victim” of someone else’s “offensive” words? Where do we find freedom in that?

Can a creed that claims to be non-religious be itself a religion? Is the professed irreligion of the leading social elites not only a religion but America’s state religion, reinforced by Federal, state, and local governments?

Consider a typical school commencement ceremony, whether college or high school. A speaker declares that we must leave all talk of God behind, toss into the dustbin the dogmas of religion that divide us, and embrace a view of life that brings people together in a common cause of humanity, a village of fellow passengers on this tiny planet as it wends its course through the universe. At another similar commencement ceremony a different speaker declares that we should rise above the hates and lusts of mankind and embrace the love of God, join together in our common heritage as children of the family of God, learning to live with each other here that we may all the better live with our Heavenly Father in the eternities. Which of these, today, is likely to receive the greater applause and public commendation? Which of these speakers, on the other hand, is more likely to be censored and not even permitted to present his views, perhaps under threat of a lawsuit? Or, to make the question easier to answer, which is more likely to receive favorable coverage in the media?

Expressions of skepticism about God and His existence are embraced, praised, and rewarded in contemporary American society. Declarations of faith in God meet anything from patronizing smiles, to hostility, to punitive sanctions under the prevailing culture. The predominant American society, while professing to be neutral about religion, has some very strong opinions about religion and its expression.

In a land of constitutional free speech, that allows no state religion, this should seem an odd discussion, a throwback to history. Cursory familiarity with the historical chronicle would bring to mind other places and times when an incautious word on religion could earn a speaker severe punishment, not excluding cruel execution. Deviation from the local religion was certainly risky business anciently. We also may recall tales of the Spanish Inquisition and the bloody controversies of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the perennial anti-Semitism that has followed the House of Israel throughout its Diaspora. Social revolutions have dealt harshly with religion, from the French revolution to every communist regime, while clumsily endeavoring to create new secular religions (that failed miserably to engage adherents).

The malodorous plant of state religion followed the colonists to America, but it had trouble taking root, particularly among the English colonies. The freedom of wide open spaces, and the need for an armed populace, made oppressive government difficult to maintain. Thomas Jefferson considered the establishment of legal guaranties of religious freedom in Virginia to be among his life’s most important achievements (the other being the founding of the University of Virginia). The principle of that law was later made a part of the United States Constitution with the adoption of the First Amendment.

The public outcry from media and politicians (with little echo from the general populace) over recent efforts of states to reinforce freedom of religion against encroachments by regulatory dicta and court edicts strongly suggests that there is one—and only one—protected national religion in the United States today. It needs no protection offered by these state laws, because its tenets are the motivating heart of the government actions threatening all of the other religions. It goes by many names—as do many broad religions—and includes a variety of sects, also not uncommon among religions. For facility of discussion, I will refer to just one of its appellations, Humanism.

The religion of Humanism has a core belief—shared by all of its sects and denominations—that man is the measure of everything. Man decides what is truth, what is good, what is real. Yes, that is more than a bit narcissistic, which is probably the key to its attraction, particularly among the intelligentsia and the elites. The chief corollary to this main tenet is that God does not matter, whether you believe in Him or not (some Humanist sects tolerate a belief in God or some sort of Supreme Being for reasons of nostalgia and to broaden popular acceptance).

Humanism has an elaborate set of dogmas, commandments, taboos, and rituals. It has its own liturgical language, which is required to be used, for example, in all doctoral dissertations—especially those in the social sciences, though its linguistic hegemony is now reaching to hard sciences as well—and in more colloquial versions observed by all media outlets, especially broadcast journalism. Humanism has its sacred texts along with its college of revered and beatified Humanists of yore.

I was going to write that Humanism has its own seminaries, but, frankly, that includes nearly all colleges and universities in the nation. The clergy of Humanism is largely self-appointed, though it has intricate, Byzantine hierarchies, with no one at the top for long, though all presume to speak for everyone. The clergy are supported by varieties of orders of acolytes and sycophants, the gathering of disciples a key method of rising in Humanism’s hierarchy, and the loss of disciples a sure path to disfavor and obscurity.

While most religions preach exceptionalism, exclusivity, or preeminence, whether in faith or favor with God, Humanism may be the most intolerant of all. Being the state religion, it uses the full power of legislatures, regulators, law enforcement agencies, and the courts to advance its cause and bring in to line people who disagree with its tenets and prescriptions, who violate any of its taboos—particularly who utter any of its taboo words—or who remark on the foibles of its revered demigods. Significantly, any practice by any other religion that interferes with Humanism must yield to Humanist demands, not excluding the profligate use of federal, state, and local moneys to fund its projects, prescriptions, and priests.

Therein lies the explanation for both the desire of various state legislatures to reaffirm religious freedom and the inveterate and fierce hostility to these efforts from the media and a bevy of national celebrities. Freedom of religious belief and practice is a threat only to an established national religion, erecting obstacles to forced conformity with the state church. Failure of efforts to reaffirm the protections of the First Amendment will result in an increasingly intimidating society, constraining intellectual freedom and unauthorized religious observance to a degree unseen in the United States since 1787.

In a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Those words are the most prominent inscription in the Jefferson Memorial. Jefferson might get into trouble saying such a thing at a modern commencement ceremony at the University of Virginia.

More and more I have been struggling for the words to express my concern over the frightening incompetence of the current President of the United States. Barack Obama’s economic blunders deepened and prolonged the recession and bequeathed to us the most anemic recovery of modern times. Most of us have been seriously harmed by those policies, some more than others. Unfortunately, the extent of his economic errors are obscured by the benighted economic management in Europe, which amazingly is managing even to underperform ours.

President Obama’s politics have yielded the opposite of what he publicly promised: division in place of unity, secrecy and deception in place of open government, exclusion of those who disagree with him in place of inclusive embrace of open debate, privilege for the few in place of opportunity for the many, racial bigotry for political gain in place of a “post racial” society, rule by breaking laws and ignoring the Constitution in place of rule of law. I am sure that you could easily lengthen the list. Again, these perfidies have been to some degree obscured by congressional Democrat leaders far too willing to compromise their duties of office and the rights of the legislative branch of government, all to cover up and support the Obama Administration’s outrages on the nation and the political institutions of the Republic.

Most frightful of all, however, is President Obama’s dangerously bungling foreign policy. No friend of the United States is safe from this Administration’s blunders. Vladimir Putin, the boss of a second rate economic and military power—albeit one with a formidable nuclear arsenal—has been able to engage in 19th Century military adventures of invasion, conquest, and territorial acquisition against little more than vacuous bully talk from Obama, the emptiness of which has produced similarly pitiful responses from the leading Powers of Western Europe, derision from Moscow, and fear among America’s friends only recently escaped from the Soviet Union. China commits aggression against India and the Philippines, threatens Japan, and toys with close relations with Russia to isolate the United States, while openly engaging in cyber attacks on the U.S. government and American industry. Islamist barbarians increasingly brutalize Muslims, Jews, Christians, and humanists alike, undeterred by inchoate responses from Obama, who asserts leadership while failing to lead, other than with his transparent policies of pusillanimity and indecision. American allies in the Middle East feel abandoned or betrayed, while enemies are emboldened; the best counter strategy that Barack Obama is able to envision is a plan that might delay but will not prevent the nuclear arming of the mullahs of Iran—committed to the incineration of Israel, the more Jews killed the better. Each day seems to extend the list of foreign policy failures.

While considering the consequences of an amateur in the Oval Office, I came across a brief note I wrote during the 2008 presidential campaign. It might be immodest for me to point out how correct my warnings proved. I can make no claims to perspicacity, as all of this was rather obvious. No self congratulations are in order. It is too dangerous a world to trust the Presidency of the United States to one whose inexperience is only matched by his hubris. This is what I penned August 25, 2008, just before Barack Obama received the nomination of the Democrats:

There are some jobs you just cannot safely do without proper training and experience. Flying an airplane is one that comes to mind. Driving a bus is another. I would put being President of the United States in the Twenty-First Century on the list, too.

President of the United States was a tough job in the days of George Washington. It was even a challenge in the days of Millard Fillmore. It has not become any easier in recent years, and next year it will be a very big job. Considering the global responsibilities of the United States, with several irresponsible oil-drunk regimes threatening peace and freedom (ours and other’s) around the world, can we afford to enroll our new President in a foreign policy on-the-job-training program?

Economically as well, there is little room for error. So far we have gone through a year and a half of the housing market bust without falling into a recession. But our economic growth is anemic. A small false step or two can put us into a full-blown economic decline, exploding banking and financial markets that will then take years to recover. It is important that economic policy next year be led by someone who understands economic growth and how to promote it. The formula for growth—low taxes and steady prices—is well known to those who have learned the lesson; we do not need a novice who does not have enough experience to know that you cannot tax and spend your way to prosperity. We cannot afford his experiments with our jobs and livelihood.

That is why it is breathtaking that a major political party is on the verge of nominating for President someone so inexperienced as Barack Obama. I am unable to recall a single nominee for President, by any major party, less prepared for the office than Barack Obama. Really, there is the challenge for you. Name a nominee—Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist—less prepared than Obama.

Barack Obama likes to liken himself to Abraham Lincoln. I cannot claim to have known Abraham Lincoln or assert that he was a friend of mine, but I do say, Barack Obama is no Abraham Lincoln. Even liberal exaggerations of Obama’s undistinguished career cannot make it compare favorably with the long and grueling life experiences that schooled Lincoln for the White House.

In short, Obama does not have the training for the job. It may be that the Democrats’ talent pool is so thin that he will be nominated. But the job of President is too important—to all of us—to be extended to someone so unready.

The beginning days of 2015 have brought the convening of a new American Congress. It is fair to say that expectations and skepticism are high.

Both are merited. Our Constitution was inaugurated with high expectations, not that the end to all problems was at the door but that the means were available to deal effectively with the problems of government for the new nation. The people who wrote the Constitution and those involved with implementing it (many the same people) were also deeply skeptical of government, including the one that they had just created. Memorable and personal experiences had shaped their skepticism. For that reason, the adoption of the Constitution had been a close thing, the opposition coming chiefly from those who thought that it imposed too much government on the people. There may have been some contemporary views that the proposed national government would be too weak and light, but I have not found any examples.

No surprise, then, that an early use of the new Constitution was to adopt the Bill of Rights—a set of fundamental rights to protect individual people from their government. If this new government were really self-government (a misconception reflected today in such bromides as, “Don’t worry about the national debt, we owe it to ourselves,” and “we should not fear the government because we are the government,” as well as much similar foolishness), then these first ten amendments would all be unnecessary. They have since proven to be very necessary, sometimes breached by our government, but more often employed to preserve and protect us from government offense.

Much as with the convening of the First Congress in 1789, the 114th Congress convenes after a troubled period of bad government. Hopes and wishes abound that errors can be corrected, freedoms restored, troubles addressed. As then, so today patience is in order.

A great virtue of our Constitution, an intentional feature, is that no one person can do much, for good or ill, in the federal government. It takes a lot of people cooperating together to get things done. Both Houses of Congress, usually with significant majorities, must agree to identical—word for word identical—legislation for it to be sent to the President, who must agree enough to add his signature to make it law. And then the President and his colleagues in the executive branch must actually execute the law, which as we are seeing with this President is no sure thing, despite a solemn oath to do so.

All of that coming together of many people, with varying ideas and backgrounds and interests, seldom happens quickly. For a people who do not need a lot of laws and direction from government to know how to live their lives, that is a fact to be celebrated. As the Founders envisioned, making law requires compromise and accommodation of the many interests of the many who compose our great nation. That takes time, as it should.

It is a mistake to banish the use of compromise from republican government. Those who would eschew compromise in our Republic would doom us to the fate of the Roman Republic. The members of the Roman Senate lost the ability or willingness to compromise. In so doing, they were doomed to inaction—not just slow deliberation—in the face of crisis, followed by reliance upon dictators, whom they fancied they could limit if not control. They sometimes chose wise men, sometimes they trusted their liberties to demagogues, invested with nearly unilateral authority for an entire year. The Republic and Roman freedom regressively devolved into the rule of the Caesars.

I understand the impatience that many have with compromise, people who would wish bold and decisive action in response to the would-be Caesar currently in the White House. To these I would say, do not despair of the strength of the Constitution, even as the chief executive seeks to violate it. In such times strengthening the Constitution and reinforcement of its checks and balances are the orders of the day, not further erosion of accommodation and compromise that have held our nation together (even through a Civil War) for two hundred years and more. It is true that some compromises are bad; despotisms or anarchies are not much good.

One of the most important compromises involves idealism and realism. American legislation requires a marriage of idealism and realism. Idealism can offer the vision of a free and prosperous nation and the inspiration to action to protect and promote our liberties. Realism, when operating in the light of idealism, focuses our work on what can be achieved now, without exhausting our energies and resources on quixotic quests that may do little more than tear the national fabric. Realism would teach that much of the policy errors of years will take years to unravel. With idealism and realism together, we can know what can and should be done today to make things better and get national policy moving in the right direction.

While a realistic view of the doable is essential to good legislating in a Congress of free men and women, the key and fundamental principles of our idealism help us discern a good compromise—one that makes things better and enables further progress—from a compromise that walks us closer to the abyss. President Reagan made many compromises, but he had a vision and knew where he was going, each compromise uniting our nation for more prosperity, greater freedom, and stronger security.

We should rejoice that no one in the Republic by himself can bring about much change, however well meaning. That virtue of our Constitution is why it has taken many steps and many mistakes to come to the many calamities our nation now confronts. In the same way, because of this Constitution, it will take seemingly many steps along the way to optimal answers. Every reason to be about the work and not tire of it.

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Worth Repeating

“Earned success means the ability to create value honestly—not by winning the lottery, not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn’t even mean making money itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others. Earned success is the stuff of entrepreneurs who seek explosive value through innovation, hard work, and passion.”
(Arthur C. Brooks, The Battle, p.75)

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